1. Call to Order & Roll Call
welcome everyone to the April 19 2023 regular meeting of the San Francisco
elections commission I'm the president Robin Stone The Time Is Now 606 p.m and
I call the meeting to order this meeting is being held in person at
City Hall Room 408 when Dr Carlton B Goodlett Place San Francisco California 94102 and on WebEx
um as authorized by the election commission's February 15th vote members of the public May attend the meeting to
observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting location or online I'll briefly explain some
procedures for participating in today's meeting public comment will be available on each item on this agenda each member
of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and
you will be muted when providing public comment you're encouraged to state your name clearly as soon as you begin
speaking you will have three minutes to provide the comment but six minutes if you are in line with her an interpreter
additional details and instructions for participating remotely are listed on the commission's website and on today's
meeting agenda in addition to participating in real time interested persons are encouraged to participate in
this meeting by submitting public comment in writing on the day the meeting to elections.commission at sfgov.org and it will be shared with the
commission after the meeting is concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file
I will now proceed with item one the commission the commission roll call
vice president jordanick here commissioner burn holes here commissioner die
commissioner Hayden Crowley here commissioner levolsi has and I'm noting
for the record has an excused absence commissioner Parker here and I myself Robin Stone am present
um I would also like to just briefly before we get into the next order of the of the
call to order and roll call I'd like to briefly introduce Marisa Davis our new elections commission secretary who has
joined us today we're all giving a proverbial clap and so happy to have her
on board and will be listening today and then next month will be up and running
so welcome Marisa to the elections Commission and then I will quickly State the
(1) Land Acknowledgment
following land acknowledgment that was adopted from our October 19 2022
elections commission meeting the San Francisco elections commission acknowledges that we are on the unseated
ancestral homeland of the ramai toshalone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco
Peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their Traditions the ramay toshalone have
never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for All Peoples who
reside in their traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional
Homeland we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the ramayana community and
affirming their Sovereign rights as first peoples okay we'll now move to item number two
2. General Public Comment
general public comment public comment on any issue within the elections commission's General jurisdiction that
is not covered by any other item on this agenda
uh just a moment here
okay we have one member of the public with their hand raised
so this is Mr Turner I've unmuted you you have three minutes
Let's uh try that again uh Mr Turner I'm unmuting you
can you hear me now yes we can hear you great thank you Commissioners um briefly
I wanted to just commend the commission for its extended amount of great work on the issue of election system security
over the past 15 years or so um for pioneering open source elections
for the state and and for the United States um although we've seen uh now uh the
state of New Hampshire go into trial for the open source system that basically
the county of San Francisco pushed the development for and now Mississippi has
actually deployed that system aside from that we're doing great work just being
part of the leadership if not in the lead uh hopefully we'll follow those other jurisdictions at this point and
for the commissioner's knowledge um there's a few articles that I think would be who the commission to be
familiar with one is from the little Hoover Commission called uh making a good system better which is
a way of framing the issue around upgrading the system technology so as
not to denigrate the current vendors um that's a a nice framing job also for
anybody that's doubting the uh benefit of Open Source there's something by the
Department of Defense if you Google DOD open source FAQ there's a frequently
asked questions um an answer session put forward by the Department of Defense that explains why
you use open source for Mission critical operations which we are we are in
agreement with Congressman slawell that this voting is certainly Mission critical for the United States and
another one um by gov Tech magazine uh which is
titled our open source elections more secure this is gov Tech uh it had a one
in a two-part series I was uh contacted by them and made statement for their
part two which said uh basically we are in disagreement with the oset position
of nuancing the license around open source we stand solidly with uh with
general public license software and finally uh self-serving as it is there
is a good documentary on Amazon Prime called the real activist and vice
president 30 seconds vice president jordanick is in there along with mayor London breed and others advocating for
open source election systems thank you very much for your time tonight thank you
okay thank you Mr Turner
I see no other members of the public with their hand raised okay thank you I should have said this
4. Commissioners’ Reports
earlier I apologize but um with six members present and accounted for we have a quorum we are awaiting the
director who ran to help the commission with something quickly so I think what
we should do is um I guess come back to the director's
report which is the next agenda item um so I'll close out agenda item number
two and move to agenda item number four in his absence and then when he returns
we'll we'll um we'll come back to it um does does that work for everyone
okay great um so closing agenda item number two and moving to agenda item number four
Commissioners reports discussion and possible action on Commissioners reports for topics not covered by another item
on this agenda meetings with public officials oversight and observation activities long range planning for
commission activities in areas of study proposed legislation which affects elections and others
would anyone like to kick it off
back vice president jordanick yes so I was originally planning to include two
documents but I only had time to create one of them and this is a a one-page memo I wrote with a couple
pages of attachments it's basically um a follow-up to our discussion at the
last meeting where we talked about the DVS order privacy flaw and I a few weeks ago I I came across a
California law that actually says that um if a voting system vendor is notified of
a of a flaw in the voting system then they're obligated by law to notify the
jurisdiction within 30 days and um this is a piece of information that we
we didn't know about last month so I just I just wanted to let people know about this law
and um I also was wondering if um
I mean given this new information and maybe this is a question for our Deputy City attorney or director Arts
um like if if there is a possibility that the the
voting system vendor did not comply with this law is there any kind of recourse like does
our contract require the vendor to follow the law and is there is there something that
you know we could do you know in response or anything like
that do they are they obligated to um
so and I attached to the agenda a document
that basically um describes the law that I found that seems to suggest that Dominion was
supposed to notify San Francisco of this privacy flaw within 30 days
and um and this doesn't have to be for this meeting but my question is if if we find or if
there's a chance that the vendor didn't comply with the state law is there some kind of a recourse
like um or in our contract are is the vendor obligated to follow the law
and if um I I mean if if we have a relationship
with this thunder and they didn't follow the laws or something that we can get in return or how does that work
basically uh Deputy City attorney Flores um I will
take your question and I can have an answer to you by next meeting great that'd be appreciate it thank you very
much so that's all I have to report thank you vice president jordanick and
thank you director Arns for printing everything for us um really appreciate it and sorry to
make you run around um does anyone have additional
items that they would like to report okay moving right along so
um director Arns just to give you a little bit of insight while you were um out of the room we just popped over to
Commissioners reports agenda item four um but if it's okay with you we'd love to go back to agenda item number three
and kick off the directors or sure okay so we're gonna um we'll quickly just take public comment on agenda item number four
and then we'll go back to agenda item number three so
okay there's one member of the public with their hand raised uh Mr Turner I'm unmuting you
you have three minutes yes thank you Commissioners um that is a startling
information um and uh regarding the discovery of the
apparent violation of law on behalf of Dominion
um it is in keeping with their callous attitude and disrespectful attitude
toward the county and the election commission with their statements in the
examiner and Chronicle saying that the people of San Francisco
don't care about elections and that the commission doesn't know anything about
elections and that they consider John arnstein the Department to be part of
their well-oiled machine um we we reject and resent all that from
Dominion we recognize that the media strangely after 2016 the media and the
uh population was not enamored with
Dominion voting systems after uh Trump's election on those systems in 2020 with
the election of Biden uh all of a sudden the Democratic party which I'm a proud
member started cheerleading for Dominion which my memory isn't that short I
remember 2016 and trying to avoid the likes of a trump coming into an office
uh like the presidency and then that happened so
um dominions current public posture is is is pretty good
they're looking like people enjoy them for some reason I guess because of the
2020 election which I understand that short-term thinking short memory thinking but we have to be very careful
here and the discovery of this apparent violation of law is is disturbing and is is substantial
and and should not be trivialized thank you hey thank you Mr Turner
is there there are no more hands raised great thank you um vice president jordanick that we will
3. [moved] Director’s Report
close out now agenda item four and move back to agenda item number three directors reports director's report
discussion and basketball action regarding director's report for the April for April
20-23 and I will hand it over to director Arts thank you president Stone uh just I take a quick question just
briefly so our website is making the change Friday uh just as you guys did and as uh commissioner Hayden Crowley
knows it's a lot of effort to make that all happen so our folks did a really good job they're they're doing a month
ahead of schedule and then all the translations are complete as well which is incredible uh one of the first aspects that will be
displayed on the new website will be our go green campaign to draw people to move
their receiving vote information capital information from hard copy to digitized
and also Friday will be the kickoff of the go green campaign
um uh we're also going to partner with the Department of environment and also the the public libraries and using uh
their their newsletters and also their their functions to to get the word out to
people there's a mailing that's gonna or an email and they'll be going out on Friday from us around 233
000 or something and also the the library has a mailing going out which they'll include the information about
going green on the library's uh emailing a lot of uh
um customers what's the word of the library are not San Francisco residents
so we're actually telling before in the message informing people even if you don't live in San Francisco to potentially contact your local elections
office because maybe they have a go green program as well so we're trying to to wrap other counties uh as well and
that's just San Francisco then of course Earth days on Saturday so we'll be present down at the Golden Gate Park for
the for the festivities down there and then just that ongoing basis we'll have uh uh various rollouts of uh uh the
digital signs throughout town the buses we'll have online ads uh happening then
also our our information that we'll be sending out as well so this is just to start and we'll continue this as we go
into the March election and then also just of note we have the high school ambassador program started up and the
the director support indicates I think 16 we actually have uh 20 uh students who are ambassadors it's uh and we'll
look to increase that the next time it's the first time we've actually provided to provide stipends to the students
uh then on I think it was last Friday we everyone came to students the ambassadors we brought them to City Hall
uh did training with them gave them a tour and brought them down to the office and then also there's a there they had
like a mentorship um relationship with folks who are part of our ambassador program where our our
folks check in twice a week with the Ambassador see how they're doing um I'll answer any questions that they
have if they need more materials uh and that way you know we we know that
they're engaged and also they know that they're supported as they go through the program and they'll look to increase
that that program as we go into September because every April and September is highest in illness okay uh
so as we go into September and then um yeah so I think from there I can take
questions on the report but but again just a lot of really good work uh come in a lot of folks in the department for
both the website and also for the go green program that's that's happening starting on Friday so awesome thank you
director Ernst was that a hand okay uh commissioner Parker
um thank you as always for this report and like great to hear all these things I'm going on I just when I was looking
at the information about the website um and I was just wondering what the
changes in the functionality within the navigation and tables that you described in your report it seems problematic
um with the information you all are trying to but that was just my read I can't see the wireframes and everything that you all have are you worried about
that at all on a user experience and um I mean I can see how it's supposed to be more user friendly but it seems
challenging yeah so that's something we're still talking about internally how we're going to going to present the
tables because not all the content will is up yet on our on our test site we've got to get that up before Friday
uh because one thing to keep in mind is that probably 70 or more of the of the
users use their phones use a smartphone not not a desktop so when we use those those tables that
are on the on the desktop version that or laptop version even uh that's not how
it's viewed on the phone uh and since most of our users are using phones uh
we're probably we probably will change the dynamic as far as what the tables look like you'll have you have to scroll
down to the bottom of the table and have a scroll bar you won't be able to to do it intuitively you'll know there's
another row once you get down to the bottom of the table and then also like tables may not be the
best approach for all information so then we'll use lists and but the benefit of using the tables
in the list is that these are already hardwired functionalities into the city's Drupal and so we're not having to
do any sort of coding ourselves and also it opens up to more people in the department who are able to engage and
participate in maintaining the websites of having people specialize and receive
training to to input information and monitor how the information is appearing across different platforms then what we
know that the city is standardized the the presentation of materials using the tables and the in the list so and it's
it's a simple matter of inputting the data and then the system takes care of the presentation
so yeah it's going to be a change but it's also the change that other departments including the commission have to undertake unless we were to try
to do something special and bring it into the site through a link and that just creates more complexity for us
um just to follow up to that do you um with my second look at you with my mic closer to me
um so as you're figuring this out um is there user testing that you all
are doing like I volunteer if you need somebody to look and say can you find what you used to be able to find
um but just wondering how you're no we haven't we haven't done that yet because we've been trying to move this forward
yeah and then also we still have our SF elections site which is a separate
website essentially that we combined with sfgov site so we still have to go
to the SF elections and have that that appearance at least be relatable if if
you can't mimic what the sfgov site the the graphics uh are
um so no but certainly yeah we'll keep that in mind if you know if we need some users we can let you know thank you
um commissioner Hayden Crowley oh thank you um president Stone I would just add
commissioner Parker I worked in the whole website space for four years in my
previous um position with the city and the department of Digital Services has been
testing this concept for the last six years and so a lot of the functionality
that the elections department will assume has been tested over and over and they I am
I pronouncing it right iterate constantly at there constantly but this
is their their flat presentation is kind of the latest in terms of of offering
accessibility to people um I mean there's lots of criteria that
have to be met in order to accommodate people of all different
um at all different engagement levels starting with just keeping the language at a reading level that is
comprehensible also with people that have um eyesight issues you know not putting
anything Trying to minimize the number of capitals and things like that capital letters because that is a is an issue so
just as a reassurance I know that what you're saying makes total sense but I would say as a starting point they do
they have been I mean testing this and testing this and testing this over Digital Services for quite some time and
I think they're pretty confident of their I'm not using the right terms but they're infrastructure that they have
for the website and for the Drupal platform and we'll see how it plays out when all the Departments get folded in
my understanding is that the Department of Health went on was like the first Department that I they were going to be
the first apartment to go onto the sfgov site I don't know if they have I haven't checked back in years but that would be
worth looking at to see if they're on because I mean the Department of Health is the biggest department in the city so
if they're on there but maybe they're not so I don't know anyway I just I I do think that that
provides a modicum of assurance thank you vice president jordanick
yeah thank you for the report to occurrence um I have a question also about the website and it's something that actually
experienced with the commission's conversion and the the commission's
website is very heavy on um like historical material that goes
back years and years like old meetings and things and one of my concerns was making sure that we don't lose all that
old information and um in terms of the department's website
are there any pages that you have that might have historical information that that you might not be converting over
and that you'll still will still be accessible via like an archived link yep
well for us for anything that we we couldn't bring over to sfgov we'll stay we'll we can put over to SF elections so
we can link over to SF elections from sfgov so we're not going to lose any archive material or so like even information that didn't
um previously exist on SL collections you'd actually move it and yeah it's okay like
just one example would be um like you had a page about the RFP from
like 2019 and is that a page that you would be converting over or moving to SF
elections I if it can that that particular page I I don't know where where it is right now but if it's
something that can move with sfgov then we just move it over okay we're not trying to create a separate site on purpose yeah and then are there any as
you're going through all the pages are there any pages that you're um you're noticing that don't apply anymore
and you're you're just going to kind of not convert them or move them
are there any Pages like that we're not going to lose any content okay that's good to know yeah okay so that's
all I wanted to ask thank you commissioner die thank you president
Stone um thank you for your report director I was happy to see all the stuff on on Go
Green in particular and thank you for looking at all the different messages uh
I had a couple of questions um about the special elections so it
seems like you acquired another one uh are all the special elections down vote by mail
yes okay and about how many voters are in each
special election the uh retirement and the retirement trust elections I think around 30 35
000. and then the Excelsior Community benefit District I don't know there's probably
no more than no more than 200 properties so I don't know how much yeah it's
probably around 200 Properties or so that's 200 voters for that one so
um I actually had a question about the benefit districts it's only Property Owners correct so
um would it be correct to to interpret that as homeowners are they also commercial properties and the City
so anyone any any any entity that has title to property would be a voter in that election okay right interesting
um I also read the racial Equity report um I had actually learned a lot and it's
a very comprehensive template from the office of racial Equity um curious there was a reference to
moving from a rule of three to a rule of ten I'm just curious what that is so when the city administers civil
permit civil service exams examinations when departments can uh when part when
departments interview candidates who made those lists uh it depends if there's there's rules
that get applied to who's eligible from those lists to actually be to be hired and so often it's the rule of three
which means the top three scores people who redecute the top three scores are eligible for positions
uh and then rule of 10 would be the people who received who acquired the a
top ten score on the examination so just to improve the diversity of who gets
considered right okay that was my guess just wondering about that
um and the other thing is I would just call your attention to the well probably starting with the Commission Section
which is obviously outdated and is going to be updated but a lot of the appendices refer to
you know 2021 budget and it looks like it hasn't been updated in in the detailed not the slides but
they actually the detailed racial Equity report so just wanted to call your attention to that
but the substance look great all right thank you
is that it oh yeah commissioner Parker um yeah I want actually I had a question
about the racial Equity report also I wasn't sure if we were going to cover that right now um uh two questions actually
um it was also great I really appreciated reading that and um the first question I had is is there
any data that you have or we'll be sharing related to some of the outcomes in particular um for example
um one of them was having cast a wider net we successfully reached a wider audience for your you know for hiring
received applications from a diverse group of job Seekers and met all of the hiring goals and so I just wondered if
you had data about like the diversity of The Hires compared to the diversity you know demographics of the city if there
was you know data associated with that that's the first question then I have another one yeah it's one of the slides
indicates that the that the the HR will provide the department with okay that's the data that the DHR would provide okay
um great thank you um I wasn't sure I did see that initial slide but that makes sense um and then
the other question I had was um around the slide about public surveys and I wondered if you ever shared
information uh like via blog or social media that indicates public feedback
that the department has received that they then that you all then have used and addressed addressed that feedback to
then make improvements um and I asked that because in my experience with a lot of public agencies
and even just organizations is such a confidence building exercise to say we received this feedback we made this
change and see what we did because what you have to say matters um and we value what you have to say and
we plan to act on all good ideas wherever they come from and it's just a great confidence building exercise so I just that's why I'm asking if you have
ever um had an opportunity to do that we haven't had a program where we
explicitly acknowledged a suggestion um but certainly we do take in
information and make changes yeah I'm glad to hear that you do
um obviously take in the information but if there's ever an opportunity I would encourage you to do that just I think
the public I know as a citizen with other public bodies I love it when you hear that oh actually it was worth it to
take the time to give that feedback then they can connect the dots um and they know that it was a direct
result you know of something the public provided just helpful when there's opportunity
I mean we respond every email that we receive and every phone call that we receive so it's not that people are just
sending uh you know emails or calling into space I mean they're either getting contact with the department and so even
if we don't formally acknowledge in some program and usually people aren't calling to make improvements to the
department they have an issue and they want it resolved for themselves and so we so we engage with with everyone that
emails or calls us on that level oh so we have thousands of calls and exchanges we have each election
thank you [Music] vice president yeah thank you president
Stone I just had a follow-up question to one of the questions that um commissioner diaste which was about
the um the election where the the properties that are owned by the city are also participants
like who would who would cast the ballot for the city in those cases it depends I
don't know I I I I don't know who the voters are in the in
that election I don't so I couldn't tell you it depends on on the entity I mean is it the owner of the property or the
people that live there but just about again these are so there's too many hypotheticals going
here so I I cannot answer your question depends who the entity owns the property
and and how who votes so I it's there's so many different situations I just
cannot give you one answer okay well then maybe just so I can have a little bit of an idea are there are there cases
where um like a government employee would cast the ballot for the the sit that a
certain property if it's owned by the city of course yeah but it might be
someone from like a certain department or something right okay great that's all I wanted to know thanks
thanks vice president I I just had a couple of questions comments
um uh the around the website specifically and I
think you'll you kind of alluded to this director aren't about the um in your I have so many papers in front of me
um but in terms of the the tables and like the actual like visuals of those
sites so can you actually explain the the um the difference between the website
that you are changing over and the one that will remain like separate from the new design because I don't think I
caught that so in terms of for example results reporting will that have to transfer into this new uh format or can
you just explain that to me sorry I think I wasn't paying attention or I misunderstood
yeah so like the results will will be on SF election
one that's staying yeah got it yeah because at that we have the ability to
have more Dynamic yes presentation of material than we have an sfgov and so that will be staying in SF elections
that was my question I just want to make sure I understood that correctly um and yeah I mean one thing I will say
just as a comment to all the other folks commenting is I have had some I I know
that Digital Services does a lot of testing but I have had some trouble with our own stuff I mean I used to use that
search bar religiously for the elections commission website and I try to now use
the archive one it's very hard to actually access archived Pages um and so it's something just for
everyone to kind of keep in mind that those are quite difficult to access and in the new
um uh on the new sfgov pages the search isn't specific to elections commission
the elections commission pages whereas the previous search bar was only for the
elections commission so it there is there will be some things I imagine that drop off
um just so um um yeah important to note
um the only other question I had about uh the um specifics in the report was just what
is the process of presenting the racial Equity um uh update do you meet with
um and apologies if you already shared this with us in previous meetings but would you mind just walking through again what that process of presenting
the plan looks like so if this go around the Departments will send their slides to the Department of racial Equity yeah
and then that office will compile the slides and then this director will I
think next month will present to the Board of Supervisors uh a like a a overall Equity report for the city
instead of departments doing individually got it so you won't even have to present on it you just send
slides basically including our slides obviously correct okay awesome um cool and uh you'll see on agenda item
number five we are going to to be talking about our slides but we will get that to you in advance of you submitting
as well and I believe you did answer this question this is not in your report it's just a separate question when are
you presenting the budget to the Board of Supervisors again it'll be the second third week usually of June I don't know
that usually it's on Wednesday um okay cool um I was mostly also thinking of
commissioner Hayden Crowley in regards to the commissioner laptops and when we might have some progress in that
information um okay so that was all from me did
anyone any other commissioner I don't see commissioner bernhold's hand rate oh is commissioner Hayden Crowley yes the
laptop still in the budget they got cut I'm sorry they got the X
um okay anyone else commissioner bernholds does not have
anything okay let's move to public comment okay there's one hand raised this is uh
Mr Turner again you are unmuted Mr Turner you have three minutes
thank you vice president jordanick actually that hand raised was a leftover
nothing to State at this time thank you okay thank you
okay there are no hands raised great thank you vice president jordanick that will close out agenda item three and we
5. Budget & Oversight Committee Updates
will move now to agenda item for the budget and oversight committee updates
um and also director arnst at any given moment you are welcome to unless there's a request for her
I know it's early 6 45. that's the biggest smile I've seen
thank you um okay thank you director arms okay so
let's move to agenda item number five budget and oversight committee updates uh discussion and possible action on
updates from the budget and oversight committee convening on April 10 2023 including but not limited to the
elections commission's racial Equity progress report to be shared with the Department of Elections and the office of racial Equity next month suggested
changes to the election commission website and any other relevant discussions or actions taken by the committee and with that I will hand it
over to vice president jordanick who is also the bopek chair okay thank you
president Stone so what I will do is I'll just briefly review the different recommendations we made for each of the
agenda items we had and also very Briefly summarize some of the things that we discussed in each item so um we
had an item about the elections commission website and during that item we we did adopt one recommendation to
the full commission and this was moved by myself seconded by Commissioners levolsi we voted unanimously to
recommend to the full commission that we add a section to our website that contains aggregated demographic
information about our membership so that's something that we could potentially act on as a as a body today
and um we also had as a guest during this item Amy Martin from Digital Services again
and she um spoke with us about you know the different possibilities for
a website she also spent time talking about how the new sfgov website is focused on what are called services and
director aren't touched on this a little bit so one of the services that we brainstormed during the meeting is that
we could have basically provide information to the public as about how they could present
to us at a meeting so if um so we could have like a page on how they
would go about then what's the process and so that's something that we had asked Amy if it would be helpful to her
if we um well we asked her if she could provide assistance because this is
something that's common to all commissions across the city if that's something they could do you know as part of a general strip
Citywide strategy and she basically um she didn't look into it and then she
sent an email that I forwarded on to all of you it's also in today's packet but um that's that's something else we
could add to our our website with with their assistance um
and so that was and we kind of just had a
little bit of brainstorming around around that as on that topic as well I I also wanted to um just acknowledge
president Stone she she submitted um different materials for the meeting and they were very helpful in kind of
focusing the discussion because she had a lot of um ideas for for things under each of the
agenda items we discussed on the the minutes we did have the draft
minutes for the August and January meetings but we we did not vote on them yet but if you're interested in those
two meetings you can see the drafts um we also discussed the process to
conduct future annual performance evaluations of the director and for this item we we also adopted a
recommendation this was moved by commissioner Hayden Crowley and seconded by commissioner levolsi we voted
unanimously to recommend to the commission that we change our evaluation process to basically kind of more align
it with the fiscal year and we would start with pre-planning for the evaluation I would start as early as
March and then it would conclude in a meeting in June of the year
that was dedicated just to the evaluation so that it would be ready to deliver in July
so that was a recommendation we made to the full commission and it would also be
useful in terms of the five-year selection process because it would ensure that we're done well in advance
of that so um and that was something that commissioner Hayden Crowley thought of so and thank you for that idea and
presenting that during that item we also kind of brainstormed a little bit about things
we might want to do with the evaluation like look at perhaps employee turnover
starting with the non-temp employees possibly doing Anonymous surveys and
incorporating some kind of a 360 review and for these things
um commissioner Hayden Crowley volunteered to start re start the process of researching those
and then come back to us and commissioner Parker your name also came up as someone who might have
information about good practices for conducting reviews
and then lastly we tucked um not in this order but we talked about the racial Equity progress report
and we did vote on unanimously to recommend some slides for the commission
to adopt and again this was something that President Stone sheet did the Lion's
Share of the work on putting a draft together and we just made three small changes to it
and those are summarized in a one-page document that's part of the packet we tweak the wording on one of them and
also added two bullet points and then the two bullet points were the wording the final wording was was
um we delegated that to commissioner levolsi so that's that's incorporated
into the slides for us to consider today so that the coverage that I think
thank you vice president jordanick for that robust um report that was awesome
um and also thank you to Commissioners levolsi um In Absentia and um commissioner
Hayden Crowley for participating in volpec and it sounds like a very a very good discussion
um does anyone have any questions or comments they want to add yeah uh
commissioner Parker um thanks this is it sounds like you had a very robust meeting sounds great
um I had one main question related to the racial Equity progress report and and this is somewhat from my reference
just because it was I can see that it was a bit of a carryover from last year to do it again this coming year
um but I wanted to understand more what what is meant by to remain accountable
to a racial Equity lens for at least one agenda item every month um I have some thoughts related to that
but I've wondered if you could clarify what that means um vice president jourdanic do you mind if
I jump in because I drafted that um yeah so thank you for that question commissioner Parker so about I would say
I don't remember when I there's a full timeline that is on the bopek packet
um but there is a meeting where we discussed this last year at some point where
there was a discussion around having racial Equity be more of a prominent
um feature of our agendas and less so that it has to have its own specific agenda item but more so just that we
consider racial Equity more in some of the policies and discussions that we
have and I'll just speak on a personal level here if I may that when I joined
the commission um a little over a year ago I had observed at that time that racial Equity
was not as prevalent of a conversation and so um in an effort to try and have it be
more of a conversation I had asked um vice president jordanick I believe as
president at the time if we could have it become more of a standing item and so that that bullet
point is just to ensure that we are continuously if not on its own you know
talking about how we're working toward some of the goals laid out in these slides we have other topics that touch
on racial Equity so an example of that might be how are we looking at redistricting and thinking about
representation from an equity perspective but always kind of having at least something
in our discussions that is taking racial Equity into consideration when we're thinking about
um the the policies and practices of the department does that answer your question
um yeah no that's helpful um can I share a couple of my Reflections on that
um so in my experience um to really move the needle on this kind of work it's really important that
it's integrated as opposed to siled and so and what I mean is I wonder I
actually am suggesting perhaps we did something a little more ambitious than than writing you know being accountable
for at least one agenda item every month and try to consistently apply that lens to every single thing that we have on
our agenda and some of the examples you listed are what I was thinking of also
um and and to me what that looks like is something more like what are the kinds of questions we are encouraging ourselves to ask on every item you know
when we're looking at things like um when we're asking questions and I think actually in my few meetings that I've
been a part of I am hearing a lot of these questions you know things like which communities are being outreached to when we're hearing the director's
report when we're considering the the budget you know how are we considering deibj in mind with that redistricting as
you just mentioned the goals that we're setting I I actually think it seems like
this group is equipped to take that lens on every single item on our agenda and so that's my recommendation is that
we're just a little more ambitious than just one so I will proactively respond this is
President Stone and say I wholeheartedly support that recommendation and would very much endorse
um uh any sort of action if the commission wants to um change that does anyone have any
response to to that yes commissioner die yeah I completely agree with what uh
commissioner Parker said it's about integration um and actually you know
as reflected in the other bullet points our work on redistral treatment form I work with
um individuals who are just as involved I mean many of the things that we're talking about at actually you know have
implications for racial Equity so so yeah I would reword that
I have a couple additional comments on the racial Equity report and once you had something else nope okay
um so first of all thanks for drafting This president's now I thought was um
excellent um I just have a couple of
other thoughts on the first bullet for external policies
I think that part of the rationale for opening up a competitive selection process was not just to allow
a diverse group of applicants to apply but also to build a pool of qualified
candidates for other senior roles for succession planning
the way it reads right now it's like we did this with a bunch of people could apply and you know the point is that
you know one of them might be successful but also uh it there may be other rules
like there's been an open deputy director position for example so I wonder if we want to just elaborate
on that a bit that was one um
and then some of this is just maybe maybe rewording this a bit this is one
two three four the fifth bullet um
it says seeking diverse and more representative candidates and what if we want to say candidates
representing the city's diversity this is on external policy still bullet
number five one two three twenty twenty two other than just seeing more representative saying that
candidates representing the city's diversity
um this is President Stone so those two specific just because you were directing me those actually I don't recall which I
I know one of these I did not I think there were edits that were made during both yeah so I might defer I'm sorry the
second one is the the bullet on um to our appointing authorities
so where is it under external The Fifth Fifth bullet one two three four five yeah so rather than saying more
representative candidates oh we didn't do anything to that yeah I was just saying to say that that we encourage them to
point candidates that are representative of the city's diversity just to be more more precise about it
and go ahead um commissioner Hayden Crowley would you
mind allowing commissioner die to complete her feedback yeah thank you uh and then
on the goals the third goal
uh this is just an awkward wording here it says it's essential that underrepresented communities be given
the opportunity to serve as Commissioners I would say under individuals from underrepresented
communities be given the opportunity to service commissioners the communities themselves are not
serving as Commissioners that's just the clarification there
I'm sorry can you clarify that again instead of just saying that the communities will be given the opportunity to serve on the commission
oh that's individual that individuals from underrepresented communities
and I think multilinguals generally one word but other than that it looked
pretty good commissioner die was that all yeah okay
commissioner Hayden Crowley um thank you president Stone uh the only thing that I think I I didn't really
think this through was on um because I was the one that wanted the voted four to two to move forward for racial equity
and open up a competitive selection um I know that that was the rationale for the four votes but the I can only
speak to my vote I was not opposed to any kind of racial Equity or competitive
or racial Equity process per se I voted no because I think that Merit needs to
be an essential part of why you would um remove someone from uh a position so
I I guess the thing that I'm objecting to is the Imp because I wanted that
information in there that we voted for it too it's sort of it's it does imply that
um the two people who I mean that's this is my perception who voted against this were were voted because of the way this
is this is worded is we're voting against racial equity and that isn't the
case I was not voting against racial equity and so but I still because I
didn't vote for it I don't want the impression given that this was a
unanimous position so I don't know how we fixed this but um I agree with your
wording on building a successful pool but the but the reason I this
this is I'm just uncomfortable with the way this is worded because it just feels like like I voted no because and I voted
against racial Equity when in fact I voted no because I felt that director arns's uh um body of work did not Merit
his opening up the position and it wasn't because I was opposed to him a a policy of racial Equity do I I
have a suggestion commissioner Hayden Crowley are you done with your feedback I'm done okay commissioner die yeah I
would just suggest separating it and just saying that we voted four to two to open up a competitive selection process
for the director of Elections position this was in part
a move to Advance racial equity and allow a
diverse group of applicants to apply as well as to build
a pool of qualified candidates for senior senior roles future position
something to that effect the decision yeah yeah this decision was reflected you know because I don't think that's
the only reason we did it either so right right so it was something that was
considered and it was cited as one of the reasons but let's not believe this chick that
the media fed us and say it was the only reason it was not so this is um president stone I have
some thoughts on this I actually didn't include this bullet initially because I actually had a lot of I was anticipating
this type of discussion um and because there you know we're a
diverse body diverse in mind and in many ways and therefore it is always going to
be challenging to say our vote of four to two was one specific thing um and I
think we all know that everyone had slightly different reasons for why they did but they did back when that occurred
um and I can say specifically mine was not my vote in favor was not about a
pool of qualified candidates for a pool for the succession plan I would I
wouldn't um support that change so even there even though we were on the same vote we
had a little bit of a difference there as well um I do think I can understand all of us
wanting our individual rationales to not um be to not lose sight of that in the
context of saying a four to two vote um I do think we could just uh I do think
we did vote that way right we did vote in favor it was a majority vote I
understand um that commissioner Hayden Crowley you wouldn't want the perception to then be
that those against it um uh those who were the two that voted
against it meant you weren't for racial Equity I do think there is something to be said about you know the conversation
around Merit and whether um that in some ways can hinder potential access to opportunity
um and I do think that that plays into this conversation on racial Equity um
uh and I also don't I think just to be very clear this wasn't about removal uh
in my at least as in my vote um so one can one alternative
um could be just to say we voted fortitude to move forward to
um open a competitive selection process um in partial effort to
um allow more diverse I'm sorry advance instead of allow sure to advance
um I don't even know where I was um no no no no no no it's no problem
um but I think we could just start with voted to open a competitive selection process and then the second half be in
an effort to advance is that what you were saying to advance racial Equity
um racial equity and allow a diverse group of applicants
a lot more diverse group of applicants is that also what you were saying
um I I would go back to qualifying it and say in part
okay which is back to integrating racial Equity into everything that we do so it
was part of the reason not all of the reason yeah right
um I I will say um this is this is President John so I
have to be honest I um I know that we didn't end up moving this
meeting but I feel slightly disheartened that we don't have commissioner levolsi present because she is the Dei expert of
all of us and um I know that she also participated in this conversation in bopack
um and so I do think I would um I if it's okay with everyone unless
there's additional comments on that specific point um I will go back and
um and consult edit based on what you have said and make sure commissioner
levolsi has a chance to also review and make sure um that any any that this kind of still
aligns with the sentiment that I think it will be fine but just in an effort to
ensure that her voice is uh her is heard um commissioner die yeah so president Stone I understand that maybe building a
pool wasn't explicitly part of the vote but the part of the reason I wanted to
add that uh was the way that it currently reads is like we opened this up so people could
apply as opposed to like potentially higher you see what I'm saying it just sounds
like we did this so that people so we could have a bunch of people fly do you see what I'm saying so that's I that's
why I I put that it's a so certainly one of my reasons because
you know as you pointed out this is not about removal and it was quite possible
we were still going to vote to to renew at that even after uh concluding a
search process so so for me it was certainly uh seeing who's out there right we
talked about that a lot just finding out who's out there and uh and some of these
might be young up and coming people who we decide you know where it's not appropriate for the director role but
maybe it would be okay for one of the you know other associate director roles Etc
so so I don't know how you say that but I I wanted to make it clear that we're not like just doing for show
um uh vice president if you don't mind me just responding to that because it was in response mind so and then I'll just
hand it quickly over to you I I it makes sense it's not just for show and it's not just um for you know to open it up but again
I personally am was did not make that vote in any context other than other
like any other um positions in the department also because I don't think it's prudent for
the elections commission to be um seeking candidates that could fill other roles I think it just like toes
the line so I personally again I I and again that line about succession plan I'm also
um I would personally not want to include that but I just want to respond I'm fine with tweaking the words a
little bit and I'm kind of drafting something while we're talking based on your feedback but I just wanted to be
clear in my in my thoughts so vice president jordanick I apologize I took your the floor that's that's fine thank
you president Stone yes so I just wanted to um just to make clear from before this this
bullet point together with the bullet point on the
on the goals that you had commented on recommend that appointing those two bullet points the wording was from
commissioner Lebowski so I do think it would be um you know courteous to to speak with her
if we do revise the wording um but in terms of the the point you
made commissioner die about the um you know just giving people a chance to
apply I'm wondering if there might be a word different from apply that might address that concern because maybe we could say I
remember one of the phrases we used was to give people an opportunity to compete for
leader leadership position I like it and that is more clear that they actually it's not just they're applying but they
can actually be in the position yep and that might be a little the emphasis might be
um before I hand it back to commissioner Hayden Crowley vice president jordanick was there anything else
um no okay thank you commissioner um president Stone you did bring up a good point after I said that I thought
that what commissioner dye had said was was important but
um I do wonder and this is maybe something that um uh City attorney Flores can can comment
on is if we are overstepping our um jurisdiction as Allowed by the um
Charter Amendment yeah I mean is it overreach to say that we want to develop
a pool for succession that isn't really I it's not in our it's not in the
charter that we're supposed to do that we do a lot of things that mayor you know I I just need to be clear and I do
think that that's something that the dis the City attorney should um weigh in on because
um if we are overstepping we need to know that point of clarification this is
um present Stone so I wasn't actually talking about um that the succession plan or the pool
of candidates were overstepping I was saying any candidate other than the
director's position because we're not allowed to do anything inside of the department our jurisdiction is over
simply the director's position um I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't that I was speaking just about
any other positions I wouldn't I don't think that that's prudent but I I could defer that
I think we should just remove that entirely unless commissioner die you
um you feel that it's important to include that like pool of candidates but I think I I think building a pool of
qualified candidates and just ending it there because you know we have to look at um
at a contract every five years and for someone you know for that high
level and seeing you have a role it's quite possible that someone we liked but didn't Grant the position to five years
ago might be still someone we really like five years later so and that doesn't imply anything about
other roles right so I think building a pool of qualified
candidates and just end it
did anyone ever no mention of succession no mention of other roles just simply that part of it is allowing them to I
like what uh vice president jordanick said compete for leadership uh and
building a qualified pool right something like that the challenge I have this is President
Stone The Challenge I have with this language of pool of qualified candidates is in my mind
and I don't intend this to be rude but that feels as personally like revisionist history that is not why I
voted in favor of this um I it was not looking far ahead it was
specifically and I actually wrote a full memo about this that I believe there needed to be more Equitable access to
this specific opportunity in that moment um and you know I do think
we don't have to keep going back and forth on just like semantics but I do
think we don't we're I want to be cautious about us not changing what we
voted on um and what we voted on was to open a competitive selection process and the
message we consistently said was to work toward the city's racial Equity goals and allow more access to leadership
positions and so I just even if you know there is some gray area of like okay
well yeah there could be you know more room for that in five years with having that pool of candidates that would apply
now you know things like that I do think there's room for that discussion I just don't think that that was what we voted on at that time yeah commissioner die I
actually I'm com this is a minor point I was really objecting to this idea that
we just opened it so people could apply and I think that vice president jordanick's language fixes that so just
to clarify then commissioner die so and vice president jordanick so would you mind repeating it so it's to com the in
it to um compete for leadership positions can you
re-articulate what you said yes um I had said
um and there's the part before this but what I had said was give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership
position but we want to say you know people from diverse group or however you
want to word that person and I think we had stated before that this was a you know highly compensated
senior leadership role in the city something to that effect so since let's not revise let's use the
language we had before so maybe so just to repeat one more time I think maybe a version could be to allow people
from a diverse background an opportunity to compete for
a leadership position and then you can word Smith that yeah I wouldn't want to say allow but
yes um open opportunities exactly what I was
thinking um got it wonderful um commissioner Hayden
Crowley are are you aligned with that yeah okay great I will if everyone is
um comfortable obviously we still need to um consider taking action but I would
I assume there's General consensus that everyone is comfortable with me just confirming with commissioner levolsi
Offline that she agrees with these changes
vice president Jordan could you just review the what were the changes to the goal the goals again
um oh I was speaking specifically about just that bullet point um but I think commissioner dye had had
some um yeah it's just a wording it's essential that individuals from
underrepresented communities which I think is good
vice president Jordan was there anything else or can I hand it back thank you okay commissioner Hayden Crowley can you just restate the bullet point how you've
revised it I haven't fully empathized it but I I could also confirm with you
because between you me and uh commissioner levolsi it wouldn't be a quorum so I could run it by you if you'd
like as well it wouldn't be a quorum if I were to run that bullet point uh offline to commissioner Hayden
Crowley and commissioner will see separately
even if it's just three of us it's only three though four four
what did the rest of the commission knows about it um okay
um are you leaving the voting um I had thought we were I thought that
was what we had planned to do but do you have concerns no uh the only thing I want that in or you could if you wanted
to just if you wanted to reward it you could say by a majority vote we could also do that
um I the thing that I wanted to incorporate from your feedback was that you said in part two yeah
um but if you are now proposing um majority vote I pers as president
Stone this I would want to hear what others have to say um I personally would support that as well yeah as long as
that as long as there's some reference to the fact it wasn't unanimous yeah um in part two yeah it works okay and
you don't need to call me okay you don't want to hear from me no it's not though I just want to move things along yes
um vice president Jordan were you gonna say something um
Okay so um this is President Stone as well I
also agree with the um suggestion about adding the word individuals in the goals I think that is definitely
um important um and then there was oh the one thing that I would like to come back to is
commissioner Parker's comment on um on the not not being limited to just
one agenda item um so let's go back to that
so that was in the priorities for 2022 and now in a
goals um was that a goal or was that in a in last
in it should be a goal it was in the progress
um yeah I would leave it as is in the in the previous one in the progress and
then change it to integrate it throughout our agenda as a goal
um I'm just making comments for myself yeah it's under it's the second bullet yeah
oh you found it I have it on here but I'm moving it to I mean it's it's actually underneath the goals and it's
the sub bullet under the first bullet yeah right ah yeah it was kind of hard too you were looking at me like I was
throughout the agenda on the agenda yeah throughout the monthly agenda
green every month just throughout the monthly agenda mm-hmm
um okay so that change plus the
um the language change and the goals in addition to the bullets um in the 2022
progress are there any other points of feedback or discussion that the commission would
like to have about this document
vice president Jordan yeah just on the last page we we neglected this portion during the meeting but did you have some
links in mind for on the yellow under resources oh
um I would like did I write that I would include will Prague oh
um okay so this President Stone so um I now I'm trying I did this several
weeks ago so um apologies my memory is not perfect um
basically uh ahead of the bopek meeting um vice president jordanick and myself
put we had individually and collectively done a bunch of work around just
tracking um the work that the commission has done uh mostly
um it's nothing like entirely formal but more like timelines of when things were
discussed um proc General progress members of the public the commission uh at large can
all go view those documents in the packet there was a suggestion I I guess
I suggested which I'm only now remembering um including some of those documents as
a part of our slides mostly because in the template from the office or the from
ore they suggest including other resources uh so that was really just
um a suggestion but I also don't think we have to do that we could we could also
just include the slides that we that we currently have and not add those things
yeah commissioner day so I have a question so the the detailed racial Equity plan that the department puts out
that I referenced um so there's a more detailed template for
the commission and that's when I noticed that things looked out of date so that's
if you look in the 65-page document from the um that's linked to the the short slides
here if you click on the the detailed racial Equity plan
there's actually a template that has to be filled in on let me see if I can find
the page it's item number seven which is commissions and boards
and I just want to make sure that um we know we're supposed to do that we
um this is present Stone no I I was not aware yeah and that's the problem is that this is what got put on the website
and it looked like we hadn't done anything because maybe we didn't know we were supposed to fill this in so it's
not just slides not just these summary slides but the actual racial Equity report which is
uh item number seven like I said which is um let me see if I can get the page
sorry where is it linked to in the in the um where it says you know detailed racial
Equity plan um are you talking about the Departments yes the Department's one and
there's a section for the commission yeah I'm trying to find the page number I keep hopping around here
it's it's there we go boards and commissions it's page 55 of
the 65-page document there's the 65-page document uh so if you go to
the short set of summary slides that was provided as a
appendix for the director's report slide there's a hyperlink Staffing plan now
that's just there's a staffing room but there's also the
sorry the slide before that it says racial Equity action plan it's on Slide 22.
Robin I see it um commissioner die where you oh this is
old I know this document um yes I'm going to jump in and just say that kind of expectation is for commissions
that have executive directors and a staff it's not really realistic for you to have to complete something beyond the
slides we are a volunteer organization we just got our secretary and you've done an incredible job with what you've
completed and I I'm just going to put it out there that I mean I I think of the
other commissions that I know people serve on they have executive directors and full staffs who do that the
Commissioners do not do this um thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley and also thank you commissioner Dai For
directing us to this if I may just quickly so this document the action plan
uh the template so I've seen this I actually referenced this in the bulpec
meeting of August 2020 yes yeah August 2022
um because the department and departments generally are required to
were required to do this very comprehensive um plan in phases
um which we were it was initially what caught my ear to us not having have one
when I first brought it up I think in like almost a year ago a little less
than a year ago and my understanding is I think now I
understand differently commissioner die what you were talking about to director Arts about how it hadn't been updated uh
the director specifically um when he emailed me said this was what
the sorry the slides is what we were accountable for so I don't I personally don't think there's an expectation but
perhaps something we could do is ask the director to link to our slides in here
in the area of this extended detailed plan so that we don't run into reporters
going around looking and saying you haven't done anything to which is what happened right yeah when we had done a
lot toward racial Equity so I think that's a takeaways perhaps we're not going to do something as detailed as
this but perhaps we could ask the director to just add a note in there that says the elections commission has
provided its um racial Equity action plan here that's the link yeah I mean I
actually don't know that it is a lot more work except that there's a timeline
um like every bullet could just be a line in this report but you know I think
that's a completely reasonable suggestion is that they simply link to these slides
but given that their report their slides linked to this report yeah we either need to get that deleted
and put put in a link to our slides or replicate it vice president jordanick
you were going to say something yeah well a couple of things number one this this plan that's being linked to that's
not something that needs to be updated for the current iteration this I think he's linking back as a historical
reference but um but what I wanted to suggest is that in terms of our current
slides I would be comfortable just like allowing president Stone to just
select the documents that she thinks are most relevant among our different agenda packets so that we don't just have an
empty resources page because I know that
we do have a lot of documents that cover different things that we've accomplished and you know one of them was
something that President Stone put together for the last book meeting so
you know what I'm saying instead of having nothing let's at least link to what we do have thank you vice president jordanick
um does anyone have any other comments
okay for example you could put the redistricting reform project plan in
there as one of the documents one for the redistricting project is the
resource um supplement um I'll definitely think about it we have about two weeks
um I will get working on this and um send it off for reference commissioner Stone if you would ask
director orange because um he does link to it this older 65-page plan is under his
resources as long as that link is in there our data old data is going to be linked
in there so either he needs to not link to it or he needs to clean it up because also the appendices are out of date
thank you commissioner yeah I I had noted that my takeaway is to ask him to just change that line in the in the part
about the commission and it'll it'll be updated any other
um any other points of feedback
I did have one question for vice president jordanick not pertaining to the racial Equity plan but about the
website and this is actually toward all the pope committee which is when you voted on the recommendation for the uh
adding demographics to the website was there a discussion about which demographics
um no we we left it pretty open-ended I think we we did talk about just have it
self-identified but um we didn't nail the details down
okay um I that makes sense I think we should
probably have and I would be happy to provide a proposal of what that would
include um but you know perhaps you know
everything would be self-identified and aggregated but um I do believe we should have some sort
of like idea of what that should be and I'm happy to provide a suggestion I'm happy to provide your questions that
um perhaps we um I don't know we can vote now for
on this or I could provide suggestions that we speak to in the next meeting but
I do think we should have just like a conversation about what those demographic demographics should be
oh sorry commissioner die yeah I had a question about the website as well um so it's not like the only service you
discussed was how to present in front of a in front of the commission is that correct
well I had I had also suggested the idea of one of the services be
like how would a member of the public if they wanted to have a conversation with the commissioner but I think there was
there was some desire that if they're going to communicate they should communicate with the whole body but we didn't we didn't discuss were
there other services commissary incredible I think we were trying we were brainstorming what that could look
like but it was we were having a tough time in the context of the way that the Digital
Services defined Services um we'd have to go back to that my brain is
very fuzzy on it sorry but you know can I just revisit the point of the racial of the aggregate
information um yes I realized that I kind of had been moving outside of um some order uh
vice president or Dominic commissioner die was that the gist of you was there more
okay was there more on that specific or can I yeah actually I I was I was going to ask
I I would think that most Services would be uh informational in nature and so I
was wondering if you guys discussed the the special web pages we talked about
that would be topic based so so we
the sense that I was getting I didn't we didn't ask this explicitly but the sense that I was getting is that like
information is not a service so it's more like some kind of activity
but um but in terms of the policy Pages we did start to discuss like whether we
wanted to have some kind of a process or policy around how we decide what to post on the website and we didn't really come
to any kind of resolution we just sort of started the discussion and we did put things on a future agenda
because we couldn't discuss at all there's a lot there's a lot um commissioner Hayden Crowley to please
um I do we we did get into a spirited discussion about the racial Equity Pro uh plan in the
context of what it meant because um I believe that commissioner levolsi
and commissioner georgonic you can correct me if I'm wrong were felt that it was a narrow definition focused on
race and I thought it was a broader um it should be broader to include
gender and age and you know various different and different things but
um as the commissioner levolsi pointed out to me that it said clearly racial Equity plan but then you know sprinkled
throughout it does say diversity equity and inclusion so they they sort of use those they use those terms
interchangeably so I just do think as we go forward we just need to be mindful about what we are specifically focusing
on I I thought it should be broader um I don't I think I should speak for commissioner Giordano but I am clear
that commissioner levolci felt it was should be focused on race so I would say
just go into the aggregate she might be that might be a conversation point of um clarification
so are you talking about the racial Equity plan or about the demographics on the website I'm talking about both
because I want to confuse you as much as possible vice president Jordan yeah I mean my recollection of the discussion
we talked about the website before the racial Equity item and I think the website was broader demographics but
when it came to the racial Equity slides that was the case where I think we felt
that it was limited to racial Equity okay look he's got a better memory
um I will say um Mr President Stone I I will say I you know I do take some um fall for that because when that fall but
uh in a lot of these efforts last year around
um racial Equity I specifically was was talking about it more broadly as diversity Equity inclusion
um Justice belonging kind of looking at it from an umbrella I think racial Equity is you know
uh principally important um but I think I in many different ways
I I've brought up efforts around Equity to Encompass lots of different
components of equity um but I think it is an important conversation to ensure that we are being
specific to the efforts we're doing around racial Equity as well the office is called the office of racial equity and so
um uh I think we can we can we can we should ensure that we're meeting those
expectations of the city and the um but also have additional efforts that are
maybe more broad as well um so in terms of moving forward for the
I think we're pretty set on what we're going to do with the slides for the demographics for the website I'll
provide a recommendation I can also speak with um uh commissioner levusi see if she has
some specific recommendations from her area of expertise are there any other
comments questions points that people would like to bring up yes vice president yeah if we do move forward
with the goals as we adapt as they're proposed today um one of the goals was around
recommending to the appointing authorities that they consider you know racial diversity so an
outgrowth of that could be you could ask bopek to create a process for that
like I was thinking we could have a a letter template and then also
you know we would insert the demographic information from the website so that could be like a future task for the
committee I support that do you believe that the that bopek needs action from the
Commission in order to do that or would you want formal action taken today in
which case I'm happy to make a motion otherwise I would definitely support the budget and oversight committee
um working on that process and template in its next meeting great I think that's sufficient
commissioner Hayden Crowley can can I just add that I know that it's the office of racial Equity but they do so
it's interesting that you apologized for the confusion because I don't see it as your confusion at all
um they put out the information and they interchange it they they use racial equity and they use Dei interchangeably
and they do mean it in a broader sense and they they do mean gender they do
mean um age they they mean all kinds of different things and so
um back to your point which I've now about the letter if we're going to put
something out and we're going to talk about demographic information um I am opposed to limiting it to just
race I just am I think gender is important I think age is important I think there are other things that need
to be included in um a statistical analysis of our commission because
there we we comprise a diverse group of folks and also where we live in the districts yeah
thank you commissioner Aiden Crowley I would also argue which I've I brought up in the August 2022 meeting that
socioeconomic status is a very um important conversation to have one of
the challenges that I find to be very inequitable about San Francisco in many
ways is that the commissions are and many most Commissioners are uncompensated which makes it very
inequitable for folks of lower socioeconomic status to potentially access these positions for a variety of
reasons which I find to be very disappointing and we had talked about this in the last meeting and so I
do think in an effort to talk about
diversity in multiple ways I do think socioeconomic status now that said in
this city socioeconomic status is often highly correlated with communities of color and so I think that it's not
um uh it's not in a vacuum necessarily but I think we should I think to your
point commissioner Hayden Crowley doing the demographic information will be really helpful for us in being able to
uh consider how we um how we speak to the letters that we
might potentially draft in the future for the appointing authorities um
yeah anyone else
okay um I'm just making sure commissioner bernhardt's did not have oh yeah vice
president Jordan so for this item I I do feel like we are going to want to
move that we um approve the slides with with the changes that you're going to be working are we going to do that today or
or what is there a second second okay sounds good okay
the motion yeah I move that we um we
adopt the draft slides incorporating the changes that we discussed today
and authorize president Stone to submit them after Consulting with commissioner
levelsi in the final wording
okay um before we move to a vote is there
anything else we need to discuss on this item I just wanted to kind of do a quick a little actually I want to do a quick
recap before we move into public Comics so we're voting on obviously we will be voting on these slides with the edits
bopek will be um working on that template based on what we talked about and I will also
provide a recommendation to the commission about
proposed demographic self-identified aggregated demographic information that
could be used as a reference point for the letters vice president for nothing yeah um so I guess we the other
recommendation we made was around the scheduling of the performance evaluation did we want to formalize that or just
table that for now or um I personally I believe that because this
is President Stone because we have not yet completed this performance evaluation I personally would recommend
that we if chair vice president and chair Beau picture
jordanick if you don't mind uh bringing this back up in our May
regular meeting um I think that would be a good conversation to bring up once we've kind of closed out hopefully okay some of
that performs that's my opinion now does anyone know it's my thoughts
okay perfect um other than that let's move to public comment and this is on the agenda item
number five budget and oversight committee updates specifically on the um
and also on the motion to adopt the racial Equity slides that incorporate
potential changes discussed today okay there's one hand raised this is Mr Turner
Mr Turner you're unmuted you have three minutes when you begin uh thank you
Commissioners uh the public supports the motion naturally obviously and uh just
wanted to provide some framing um lest we forget the false outrage that
occurred uh upon the mention of racial Equity uh when when this was all
initiated we saw the unusual circumstance of uh
supervisor peskin linking arms with Tucker Carlson
um to say that there was uh outrage we we considered that a political hit
job it was maybe one of the most uncomfortable awkward
uh moments that I've seen in San Francisco politics doing this for 20
years it showed the power of Dominion uh and their uh position to retain John
arnst under any circumstance and uh the manipulation of the press was palpable
and and disgusting basically so lest we forget that that happened the political
pressure was was uh obvious and and disturbing in that moment and really
showed what everyone is up against trying to move toward open source voting
um I know open source voting was backseated in the conversation maybe appropriately in that political moment
but we want to make sure that it is clear that when we talk about Equity
this is the purpose of moving toward open source elections this is to defeat
Jim Crow 2.0 and this is why folks like
the Medgar Evers family the Southern Poverty Law Center the Harvey melt Club
the National Organization of Women this is why they all stand in support of your
work toward open source election systems thank you okay thank you Mr Turner
I've seen no more hands raised thank you so let's move to a vote on vice
president jordanick's motion to adopt trap slides that incorporate excuse me
adopt the racial Equity drop slides that incorporate changes discussed today after president Stone consults with
commissioner levolsi to align changes and so let's move to a vote vice
president jordanick yes commissioner bernholds yes commissioner die I commissioner Hayden
Crowley yes commissioner levels he's absent uh commissioner Parker I
and I present Stone vote Yes um and the motion passes unanimously
with one absent and so I will move forward with those slides in the
timeline necessary to meet the deadline so that closes out agenda item number
6. Amendments to Elections Commission Bylaws
five we will move to agenda item number six proposed amendments to the elections
commission bylaws continued from the March 15th meeting discussion and possible action regarding proposed by law amendments on the commission's
remote public participation and parental lead policies so I'll speak to this quickly I moved this from the last
meeting to today given that our last meeting was going really late
and I felt that um yeah it was going late we didn't I don't need to share more
um so really the there are two kind of important things to share one is that
um the uh Deputy City attorney had provided
guidance on the language for the um for specifically around the parental leave
policy uh and this is something that was in an earlier Memo from the city
attorney's office about uh these policies that pretty much every commission should have in their Rules of
Order or bylaws and basically the city attorney's office recommended that those
bodies that do not currently have those included into their those specific
documents should consider doing so so that is that this is my effort to advance that in partnership with the
city attorney's office the other component of this is just to go along with the
um the decision by the elections Commission in February to make remote
public participation available and accessible at all mood meetings moving
forward as a commission policy and I specifically thought that it was
important to incorporate this into the bylaws at the time I had proposed doing that but did not do my due diligence in
reviewing the actual fine print in the bylaws that said that
you needed to circulate it in advance of the um in advance of the meeting so this
is my addition it is on page six of the commission bylaws and it specifically
says that the commission shall make accessible both in person and remote public participation at regular special and committee meetings and then it also
includes details about the notice and how and the information
for how to do so one just quick caveat and then I'll hand it over to everyone for discussion
uh is that um the uh this is something that may not
always be easy and seamless um you know I had mentioned in the last meeting in uh secretary Davis and I have
been discussing um this as well that you know I'm hoping that the commission can have a retreat
over the summer um that will have to be made accessible to the public in person and remotely so
um this does have considerations but I think in the effort to think about broad Equity I think this is one really
important way to um to demonstrate that this is uh important
um as a as a body so with that I will hand it over for the body to discuss and
then hopefully take action on yes commissioner Parker
um as I've stated before I'm in strong support of particularly the policy we're just talking about and I would just like to move that we adopt both of these
amendments to the bylaws thank you I just want to clarification yes so the
the hybrid meeting format it's
uh intended to be part of the bylaws because are you saying that uh it's just
a policy are you saying that you intended to put a change to the bylaws and didn't get around to it I I wasn't I
wasn't completely clear on that I'm not sure I understand what you're asking well the document we have only
mentions the parental leave and so I'm just wondering where oh keep going if you go to page six of
the um of the of the bylaws you'll see in red under
Section 2B all of that is proposed changes no problem I know it's been a
while yes I know there is a emotion on the floor
um vice president Jordan [Music] uh commissioner Hayden Crowley
okay commissioner died did you have additional comments that you wanted to make
um I guess my only question would be
thinking about special advisory committees in the flavor of of
the austvac committee that vice president jordanick
used to head would that apply to that um this is President Stone so I do
recall you had mentioned something about this offline to me um commissioner if I may and actually I ran this by the wcd
attorney and again my memory is still a little bit fuzzy but my
um the rules are actually pretty stringent from the city around
um around uh advisory like around meetings of committees and so
you would have to provide um like most meetings have to be in person anyways you can't really have
remote meetings but I'll defer to um DCA Flores to speak to that a little
bit if you don't mind DC Flores just about like the protocol around bodies meeting
um remotely and whether or not that's an option
so under the so now that the pandemic is over we're back to pre-pandemic things
so if this body wanted to have a remote meeting
um they would have um to abide by a very stringent set of
criteria which would mean if you wanted to be remote you would have to and you
haven't applied for an um an accommodation you know you would basically have to wherever you're
meeting from you would have to allow the public to go there to meet with you as well so there are just a number of
things that um would be difficult to accomplish hence
why no one was virtually meeting remotely before the pandemic so all of
those special rules we had during the pandemic are now not in existence so all
your meetings must be in person unless you have an accommodation
what okay yeah so in particular I was wondering about an advisory body where
for example in the open source one did technical advisory committee there was only one commissioner on that in in that
group if you individually as a commissioner
wanted to meet anywhere with anyone you can do that if it's not a meeting of
this body then yes if you are going to have a committee I
don't know if you're trying to make a distinction between committee and advisory body yeah
I don't think that um yeah so an advisory body would not be subject to
these rules um it wouldn't be a meeting of this body right okay yeah that's what I wanted to
specify because it says regular special and committee meeting so if it's not an official committee that's a part of this
body then yeah no so if you're just doing this on your own and you want to hang out with a bunch of folks and have a meeting about things you're more than
welcome to do that and the brown act doesn't apply but if it's a committee of this body that is being sanctioned by
this body then you have to abide by the brown acts and also by the in-person meeting requirements
um I don't know if that explains fully this is President St John thanks DCA
Flores I believe that if there are task forces or advisory committees those
should all have access access um so I think perhaps you're if I recall
your concern was meeting in person you don't mind the remote access it's the in-person my understanding and I we'd
gone back and forth about this but my understanding is that the rules around um even the advisory bodies from the I
think it was like February 10th memo February 10th is that a fair
understanding is that you would have to even if you did have those meetings if it's an advisory bot committee you would
have to provide even if you do them remotely you still have to provide access to let's say your home
so like we had talked about this with um boat pack and bow pack uh you know there was a
conversation oh you could do it remotely however you have to give members of the public access to wherever you're taking
it remotely so if it's at your house people have to have access to your house so but an alternative could be you could
do it at a coffee shop um and that would give access to the public I think it's back to what's an
official extension of this body because it's an official committee
um yeah we had that same issue at the state level because when we were no longer meeting all the time we had
people who wanted to meet remotely and yes they had to post notices and let
people into their home or find a public location for it Okay cool so that means
you're does that mean you're in support of the the committee meeting thing or
okay cool um does anyone oh my apologies just to chime in um so that everyone is on the
same page so the rules pertaining to advisory bodies if they'd like to meet remotely meeting agenda must be posted
at the teleconference location the meeting agenda must identify each teleconference location each
teleconference location must be accessible to the public members of the public must have an opportunity at each
teleconference location to directly address members of the policy body Aquarium of the members of
the policy buddy body must participate in the meeting from teleconference locations within the jurisdiction all
votes taken must be by roll call the technology used for the teleconference Maybe audio only or both audio and
visual so again um we advise that if it's a meeting
advisory body committee or whatever you want to call it it's a committee of this
body that um you know these requirements are very stringent to
follow so therefore you know no remote meetings got it
okay um if there are no other comments from Commissioners let's move to public
comment
so I do not see anyone with their hands raised okay great
let's vote on um the motion and I can't I apologies
who made the motion was that commissioner Parker okay um uh and we'll now be voting on the
motion on commissioner Parker's motions who adopt the um bylaw proposed bylaw amendments
vice president jordanick yes commissioner burn holes yes and commissioner die
aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes uh commissioner levolsi is absent but
commissioner Parker yes um and I president Stone vote Yes
and the motion unanimously passes apologies there is some cricket sound
happening somewhere um that's very funny and distracting the motion passes unanimously
um with well well one in absentia but um of those in attendance and the proposed
amendments to the elections commission bylaws have passed thank you all
so um that closes out agenda item number six let's move to agenda item number
7. Possible Closed Session Concerning Director of Elections
seven possible closed session concerning director of Elections 2022 performance evaluation continued from March 15th so
first we're going to start with a public comment on all matters pertaining to the agenda item and apologies that should
say seven not six okay see one hand raised
uh Mr Turner I'm unmuting you you have three minutes uh thank you
Commissioners I'll be very brief obviously the public objects vehemently and strenuously to the uh apparent
automatic reappointment of director aren't under the circumstances he's
provided disinformation to the Secretary of State um his
gone out of his way to be less than fourth right to the commission over the years has personally blocked we believe
uh the 15 years of work to move toward open source and is directly responsible
for San Francisco counties inability to move toward open source which has
affected the state of California and their ability to move toward open source
now we're seeing the outflow of 15 years of work done within San Francisco county
the the missing monies that happened that were allocated and then and then
dismissed during the covid crisis through Linda Jarrell and it's and all
the bad press about Dominion uh you know being disrespectful to the county and
and no accountability it's just I mean we haven't seen ballots in the bay
during his shift and I guess that's his big point of strength and he paraded all
his employees to say how great he was but aside from that you know he's functional but there's no leadership
there and this was a moment that cried out for leadership so
um you know uh under that framing we we think it's best that he's
uh replaced however since that's not going to happen obviously as the political pressure from Dominion in
concert with uh Aaron peskin came in to save him we we just want it firmly on
the record that the uh public objects and and we can do better than this thank
you okay thank you Mr Turner
there are no more hands raised um so let's take a vote on whether to
meet in closed session to consider 7 D in um
yet to move into closed session um vice president jordanick yes
commissioner bernholds yes commissioner die aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes
uh commissioner Parker yes and I president Stone vote Yes and
commissioner levolsi is absent um so we're now going to move into
closed session um and we will return
um we'll return back into Open Session um yes
um sorry we're moving into closed session at 801 pm
um thank you everyone it is the time is now 9 06 p.m and we have reconvened in
Open Session um we are now going to discuss and vote uh pursue it into administrative code
67.12a on whether to disclose any portion of the closed session uh regarding seven
um d I would like to take an action
I I move that we disclose no portion of the closed
session discussion okay
um let's oh we don't need to take public correct um okay on the motion to not disclose
any portion of closed session vice president jordanick yes commissioner burn holes
yes commissioner die aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes Commissioner of both of these absent
commissioner Parker yes and I president Stone vote Yes the motion unanimously
passes with one absent um and we are not going to disclose
anything great um so with that we're going to close out
8. Redistricting Process Initiative
agenda item number seven um and move to agenda item number eight
redistricting process initiative discussion and possible action regarding the commission's ongoing redistricting
process initiative and I will hand this over to commissioner dye thank you president Stone uh hopefully
everyone had a chance to review the documents that I sent out last night uh
we basically took all the feedback that we heard from the commission uh concerns
about our capacity as a commission given a bunch of competing priorities
uh and lack of Staff resources and what we heard from you is that we needed to
go out and get our legislative Champions and punt this to the board as quickly as possible so that is the updated plan
that we have presented to you in version five of our
plan so all the changes were basically on a couple of pages
um so you'll see a revised schedule and based on
suggestions from some of the public commenters at our last meeting
and to give us flexibility we have basically asked for some volunteers uh
to help us refine our final set of recommendations so if we put this
uh Blue Ribbon good government panel together uh consisting of
the folks listed on the top of page five of the plan including members from California common
cause the League of Women Voters and Asian Americans advancing Justice Asian
law caucus as well as a former member of the redistricting task force this last
time around and they have kindly agreed
to do the heavy lifting and review what the implications might be of ab1248
which we learned about in our last meeting with um Nicholas heidorn
and also there's another bill that we discovered which is AB 764 which basically is a
result of the report that you guys all read the promise of fair Maps which is designed to strengthen the fair Maps Act
of 2019. so this advisory panel
um is planning to review that and give us their feedback on what it
might look like if we allowed ourselves to fall under these proposed bills
and then where we might run into trouble and I can tell
you one thing we're going to look at is this issue of random selection
versus versus explicit you know vetted selection but
the first thing I've asked them to do is to imagine what it would look like if we
decided to adopt all of the provisions in 1248 and basically strike all the
existing language in the charter and would that get us you know 80 90 100
of the way where we want to go so um so with the commission's permission
this advisory panel will crunch through this
come up with some options give us pros and cons so that the
commission itself can deliberate what the final package might look like
uh and meanwhile um
we went and approached some supervisors and when I say we I mean commissioner
Parker so I of course have been speaking with
president puskin but uh after some discussion we decided to also approach
supervisors Melgar and Dorsey as well and
they are both considering possibly co-sponsoring this and commissioner Parker do you wanna
say a little bit about your initial conversations um excuse me sure
um I think you know of course I don't want to get too much into detail because they're considering and I think they're
talking with staff but the the initial response uh was positive
um the idea that this is getting San Francisco in alignment with best practices was really resonated with them
they said why would we not want to do this um when I talked about the goal being that we have 11 co-sponsors from the
board um putting this on as well as the mayor that it would be a no-brainer sort of a measure if we do the groundwork they
were all excited about that um when we talked about
um you know ab1248 just general recommendations um there was and I and I believe that
President peskin also shared this sort of a view is that let's try not to stay stray too far from recommended
priorities from the state and make San Francisco too special we get into trouble sometimes we try to be too special
um so there was that General sentiment um and yeah I think there was just
generally enthusiastic response and not a lot of barriers that seem to cross but they wanted to have their conversations
also you know internally so we're just we're a bit on hold just to see what other questions come up
um but I think the hope would be that we have a great Trio of co-sponsors who
will lead hearings and really take the ball the Baton and run with it and it it
leaves our plates and then and that we are able to get support for something
that feels like a no-brainer sort of a measure from the rest of the board and the mayor so yeah so if you look at the
schedule basically uh we'll give the advisory panel some time to deliberate
and present us some options uh I think that we can
provide you know at least kind of consensus
recommendations at the next meeting and maybe if necessary if we still feel like
there's additional time that maybe a set of more detailed recommendations that we
need to debate a little bit more at the following meeting that would still give the commission you know one or two
meetings to deliberate if it really takes that long and then we'll pass it
over for uh to I mean to our legislative sponsors and hopefully they will have
committed by that and then they will need to introduce it by September uh and then it would go to
committee with the idea that they would have at least a we're going to recommend at least a couple of community input
hearings but the reason we've involved the folks that we have in this advisory
panel is that hopefully we'll get the full endorsement of all of these organizations so the good government
groups will also be co-sponsors so did you decide on this panel what
oh sorry it's okay we'll let commissioner die finish and then I'll pass it over to commissioner Hayden
Crowley uh but to address your question um commissioner Hayden Crowley um these
were the same organizations that had been monitoring the process this whole last time and they've been at our
meetings you know for observing us and adding public comment and basically you know we asked the League
of Women Voters who were on the call last time I asked them straight up if they would be willing to do this so they
said yes and then I went ahead and reached out to the executive director of California common cause and was happy to
find out that they just put on a new voting rights and redistricting program manager she literally just started like
a week and a half ago and so he signed her up for that um and then uh
I reached out to seedsig Offroad who is the person who replaced the speaker that
we had from Asian wall caucus during our educational phase and he was he was happy to join and then
we just rounded it out we figured it'd be good to have a former member of the redistricting tennis Force
uh and Chama actually was the author of The What I Call The Minority Report
of the folks who did not vote for the map and so um
he he agreed it would be healing to be part of this so anyway they have all volunteered
their time and uh are willing to meet several times to Hash this out and help
help guide us and make a set of final recommendations that hopefully will give us all the confidence to move forward
and pass it along to the board just a couple other comments
um supervisor Dorsey is chair of the rules committee so that it will have to go through the rules committee so that's
one of the reasons we wanted to seek his sponsorship and then supervisor Melgar is from the
west side and there was definitely a West versus East Dynamic during the during the public input hearing so we
felt that was important to get representation there and um president peskin pointed out she's
also not on the budget committee which is really important because any public hearings you know they have to start
their staff needs to get started and doing Outreach and all that that might happen during the summer during the
budget hearing so okay so I wanted to just
um get some feedback and see if you're if everyone is comfortable with this
direction and then if so we will come back um you know with you know at least the kind
of um response to some of the pending legislation uh at the next meeting and
if if we can get it all done we will try to but it might take us a couple meetings to to get all the
recommendations in front of the commission commissioner Hayden Crowley so did you
um run the panel by um supervisors Mill gard and president
peskin we didn't know exactly who was going to be on but we told them the organizations that we were seeing yeah and they were
um I'm just going to throw a little I I would get somebody from labor on there if you want to build support
I'm pretty sure Shema is involved with that but I will ask I don't know yeah
but you but look at the labor Council or the in the Building Trades one of their people okay I believe is a
political organizer person oh okay yeah yeah
um okay so was he on the executive board at the labor Council I don't know about that but I know he's
involved well check out check that out make sure that that person's executive board
vice president you had your hand up yeah I have a couple of questions um with this this advisory committee
is this like an official it's a task force it is not official so it's sort of
like an external to the government they're just okay so in particular they don't need to
follow the brown act because there's yes and and we can meet remotely because
California common causes uh our uh Russia is in LA
so okay but it says we have assembled is that you and commissioner right okay
um and then my other question was about the letter the draft letter and I actually was very intrigued by this
ab1248 from the last meeting so I actually met with um Jen say and Lauren gerardin okay we
met for like an hour and a half to talk about 12 48 and um
the thing that was not clear to US unless I misunderstood our conversation it wasn't clear
which parts of the bill would apply to San Francisco in which which wouldn't
and it's it seemed very um like a tech it's like a technical legal
question in some cases because um for example if it didn't if Parts
don't apply to San Francisco then I think it might actually we might want to request
amendments to ab1248 so that if it could be tweaked so that it does apply that
would be more useful for us but um I think it would be useful to know
prior to sending the letter like which parts definitively do or don't apply to San Francisco
do you understand my question I do and there's also it has a different process
for a city and a different process for a county and we have both um and actually uh this is the reason I
requested a legal analysis from dca's Morris and rusi and that they're still
working on it um so I think really what we're going to
um I mean whether it applies or not
this letter of support is meant to just indicate that we support the general
provisions of this I mean like I said some of the details are
you know who would be the appointing authority and things like that and then even so
they give you multiple choice they give you many choices yeah it's
um I'm sorry vice president Jordan so I guess I guess my the issue would be
though like this is sort of like our one shot to kind of influence the bill and if if there was some tweak to the bill
that would cause a section to apply to us I mean I feel like it would be good to
know that beforehand or otherwise we'd have to write a second letter saying oh by the way we actually want this
tweak or something you know because I I mean do you know like from reading
yourself do you have a sense for which parts do in line don't are you equally unsure
so I'm not a lawyer which is why you asked for the legal analysis so maybe we
should defer to uh uh DCA floors to respond to this but the way that I read
it it specifically did not exempt San Francisco uh it is written very specifically to
sweep up all Charter cities um over 300
000 people so as as as far as I can see we would
fall under the provisions unless we complained about it that San Francisco also would
not be Exempted because we have a political appointment process and so it says if you have an existing independent
commission but it has a political appointing process and you have to fall under it as well
so everything that I read in it says that they intended for us to
to have to comply okay yeah I was hearing conflicting
things from from others on that but um yeah it's it's fine this is um president
Stone I so actually sorry vice president jordanick did you have more you wanted to add so I
just wanted to jump in on that letter and then also a couple other things um so personally I don't think that we
should send that letter just yet I think we need to wait um until we have some more guidance I
think I would imagine the commission agrees on that um uh mostly until we see the analysis
and also um have more insight from the task force
which I will come back to um but I think
either way I would probably want to change some of the language similar to how vice president Jordan and I have
been working on some of the other letters pertaining to the DVS order flaw from the last meeting so just something
to put in the back of of the Mind there um so I just I I appreciate I really
appreciate the updated um like thoughts around this and the especially the efforts to invest in
um finding legislative sponsor like actual having supervisor sponsor one
question I have which we don't have to answer right this second I'm going to run through a few things is what the
next touch point is with the supervisors because it's nice to hear that they are like you know supportive but
um you know politics is we're still in San Francisco so I think you know what
what's next what's the next step with them is something I'd like like to understand
um the other thing I was kind of unclear about is the public hearings
um and so you did clarify commissioner die that that would be all through the
soups and not through us which is I think a relief on personally
um not that I don't think it's super important but I actually think we'll get more Community participation if done
through the soups um but I was confused just a little bit about the Outreach plan in terms of like
is that just us trying to you know show support for the hearings the one on page six I just was is that
just you know an additional thing we can come back I'll list my questions we can come back to each one of these um so the
goal of those Outreach things because I I definitely have some like more detailed thoughts on that Outreach plan
that I shared a fair amount of I shared a fair amount of my thoughts via email already which is like resources capacity
time people taking who is doing these things um cool yeah
um love to hear that um and then the last was um about this task force there are two things about that so
I was slightly disappointed to see that this asset this advisory committee was
already assembled because the commission specifically in the last meeting said that we were not voting on that um and
per our bylaws which I believe I mentioned last time we do have to vote on that I think it's amazing that
um there is so much momentum and support um and passion for putting this advisory
committee together but I am I think that it is in the best interest of us to when we
say you know when we're talking about these things that like you know we said we're not going to move forward with
voting on this today we want an updated plan and then let's talk about it um and
I believe vice president jordanick specifically talked about his experience and how much work it was doing the task force
um and the fact that there's already kind of bones to who's on it and people are already doing work on it you've
already established the committee at that point it's not you don't you know it says we assembled and you already
have the people who agreed to it which um I think did go against what the commission said so I just wanted to put
that on the record the other thing I wanted to ask is um and by the way that is not to say that these individuals aren't phenomenal
they're all wonderful um and are very credentialed so it's not personal it's more just you know making
sure that the way that Commissioners operate is based on how the entire body has agreed
and voted on something I think that's important um the only addition I would add to that
is I you will not be surprised to hear this but I want to make sure we have Community participation in this panel
and not just um you know the experts I understand that these folks have like I said
amazing credentials but we had so many people in the public who were passionate
who showed up to every single meeting who were just members of the public who cared and I think we have to include
Community groups in this panel discussion because otherwise for lack of
a better term it's an ivory Tower and I think we have to have people you know
especially if some of these folks don't even live in San Francisco um we need we need members of the
communities who are most affected to be participating in this panel from the get-go that is my strong belief
um I am just one person but that is my strong belief um and uh what was I going to say the
labor task force communities oh sorry excuse my
language um I oh I yeah I think it's just I would
encourage you to consider maybe doing so asking some of these groups or
um you know I know someone called from SF Rising last month um asking them if they know people who
might want to join just to get some people who are just passionate about
um uh redistricting from the public to participate on the advisory committee
um since the the work they're doing is that you all will be doing is so important I think that was it so
um I know that was a while I think commissioner die you were going to respond to the question about
um hearing oh the next touch point on the soups yeah okay so that was a lot but
um yeah we were gonna Circle back with them uh
because we wanted to give the supervisors reapproach a chance to talk to each other
uh and decide who's going to run point and all that so next week I think we're
planning to is that right commissioner Parker um yeah I sent a follow-up to them
yesterday um with some more details a lot of them have been out of town and I do know they want to all touch base with each other
again and and decide who on their staff would be taking the lead on this um so
uh yeah so I sent a follow-up yesterday and had a little bit of exchange with them so um if I haven't heard back by
next week I'll check in but the expectation when I spoke with them was not forever it was I did you know say
within a couple of weeks and they said yes and so um hopefully we'll have more on that soon
um and I am planning on reaching out to the mayor's office in the next few days just to start that conversation so
they're not surprised by anything neither yeah uh and then just to clarify the proposed Outreach plan has not
changed from the last thing so um the recommendation I heard I believe
from you president Stone was that we hand our Outreach plan to the supervisors
um but I'm sure they're going to have their own ideas and their staff is going to have their own plan but you know we
wanted to share what we had thought and so I have not changed anything from page six on that in fact the questions that
we had put together on page you know the bottom of six and seven you know
those could change too especially if we we have more much more explicit
recommendations by then that we don't need to ask these questions so we would defer to the to this to the
staff of the legislative Champions on what they want to do of course we're going to plan to stay in
touch with them and see what they're going to do and and be in conversation to make sure that
whatever is the final ballot measure is something that we'd all still support uh
I guess the other comment I wanted to make was I um maybe I misunderstood by my
understanding because I asked for the commissions you know support I'm moving forward with this my understanding at
the end of the last meeting was putting together not a subcommittee of the commission but in fact you know an
informal task force of people who are not on the commission was the preferred
approach so that's that's what I did that's what I followed through on so
so this is President Stone it you know it's kind of a moot point at this point however I did go back and re-watch the
meeting because I knew that this was happening after the meeting and I specifically said the commission did not
vote to move forward with a task force um so just for the record we
specifically talked about it because vice president jordanick said how much work it was when he had done it and so
what we act what the motion was and to be to be fair commissioner die it was there was a lot of back and forth it was
I can understand where it maybe I could I can see where maybe there was
ambiguity because there was a conversation about the task force people seem to be interested in that but then
we kind of came back and said that's a lot of work and there's still a lot to discuss about this but ultimately the
motion the vote was on just a new plan but I think at this point like I said
it's mood you've done great work I don't want to undermine that I just um I just was surprised when I saw this
that the ascent like the that the people had already this was already in motion
um and especially because our bylaws specifically say that the commission has to vote by majority on this so it is you
know it's moot it's moved forward but um a also can understand where there was
some the confusion I think just for all of us um you know I also as president can do a
better job being better about when we have specific actions taken explicitly
repeating what the motion is that we're voting on and what passed I think I haven't always done a great job at that
so um I can take I can take the the um take the responsibility for that as
well but if you do look back after watching kind of the discussion we
did say it either way I still want someone from the community that's still yeah okay so
um so we did have a discussion about it and in fact I specifically spoke to someone from San Francisco rising and
they didn't want to be a part of it um so the feeling was we they wanted this to come from Good Government groups
um and the concern they were worried about the political
things of who's going to be included and who's not if we have to start picking Community Representatives
and in fact I specifically asked some latinx and and
and and and black organizations and they basically said no so I mean part of it
is a capacity issue so I think that they'll be happy to comment on things when the community
input hearings are held I think that there's a lot of confidence in these groups because they monitor the entire
process last time and wrote letters to the commission and into the redistricting task force so so
that was discussed in fact you know the when as we were even trying to figure out who else could do it from these
organizations and commit to it um you know there's a lot of brainstorming
on what groups we could involve and I think ultimately the decision was to keep it relatively small uh so that we
could get through it and still have a chance to make the March ballot so just so you know there was a lot of
discussion about it I appreciate that commissioner Ty thank you commissioner Hayden Crowley so
I just looked up this assembly Bill 1248 and it looks as though it doing this wrong I clicked on sponsors
there's only two sponsors on the bill that does not bode well for the bill
yeah it it may not pass but the point is that regardless of whether it passes or
not they have put in all the best practices that we are talking about so
even if it doesn't pass it might be a model for our legislation okay I I just wanna because I think as your as your
supervisors it would be helpful at filting and Matt Haney were sponsors on the bill right because you could go back
to the Board of Supervisors and you know in to get Scott weiner involved in it as well they're on our list so I you know
particularly if you're trying to work with the Board of Supervisors on it um I I guess I'm not because I didn't
read this whole thing I'll be candid um I started a new job so my time is like
really compromised but um this uh
task force um first of all I did just look up Chima not on the Executive Board of the
labor Council probably so I would recommend that if you're if whatever you
do with this task force which I don't know what their role is but that you do have somebody that is on the Executive
Board of the labor Council um that would be very important for you um but I don't know what exactly the
task force is going to do because in my mind this is hopefully going to be a
board thing and this is going to be their their job the task force would be maybe I view down the line as like
endorsers for this you know would be pushing the campaign so just to clarify the role of the task force is simply to
advise us oh okay their their job is to like basically do what I had originally
wanted a subcommittee to do a committee of uh three uh commissioners
um and what I heard last time is we didn't want to form another committee and
you know could we accomplish it another way and this was the suggestion which I thought was an excellent suggestion and
they're willing to do it and so they're like I said gonna do the heavy lifting and debate things and then come back to
us with pros and cons hopefully in a simple table that we can just say we agree or we have some questions and
we'll help our deliberations to move faster I would also think that they could help you in terms of securing the
political support you need at the board that's the number one thing that you need because that you need the board to
do this yeah not us and and in fact um you know I was keeping commissioner
Parker updated every time someone said they were willing to do it so it was very clear like who else is going to be
working with the elections commission to jointly present this to the board and
you know again it's helpful if we if we get old and decide on and and we
you know accept their final recommendations or with some tweaks and
they sign on then we can say not only does everyone on the elections commission endorses these organizations
endorse it too and that's the idea um yes vice president so just to clarify
has this body like already started meeting like are they actually formed only to come up with that clever acronym
what's that fierce Fierce fair fair
independent oh so they didn't they didn't meet just to be because you know
they hadn't met each other right okay some of them had but yeah yeah I mean I
I just want to also I I guess it is water under the bridge now but like I think my my recollection too is that
we had a discussion about it and it seemed like people were leaning towards having an external body I think maybe
what what I was kind of expecting was that at this meeting you would come back with
a proposal to form a body like what you formed but now it's already been done so
there's no chance to like influence how it's being structured I guess I
think I I'm just that's like I said it's water under the bridge now but I think that was maybe what the issue is for
you know what I'm saying you know I'm happy to take additional input but uh
like I said we actually had some discussions you know I had some initial discussions
with the representatives from the League of Women Voters who attended our last meeting and remember I asked would you
be willing to volunteer on this and they said yes so that's that's how it started
yeah I mean I guess an alternative would be you know during the meeting and say I had these six people in mind
how does the commission feel about creating a body based on these six people or whatever you know what I'm
saying that's that's the if you don't agree with it then we can I mean like I said we haven't done anything yet I mean
I I only you know recruited people and then ask them if they were willing to serve
and had an initial meeting to to people to say hello we have not done anything
so there's still time okay
um is there oh commissioner Parker yeah um thank you
um a couple of things um that I had written down in response to
reading all of this um which I appreciate um commissioner die in levolsi for working
on all of this um in response to one question that just there was about the good government
groups um uh when I have talked to the supervisors about supporting this and sponsoring it and
have brought up some of the groups you know who've been coming forward and and have also asked them if there are other groups they thought should be included
and they haven't had suggestions so far just that that could be good information for you all that you know making sure
that um that we all are aware of what other good
government groups they think should be involved in this kind of early on and they didn't have other suggestions
um but anyway um but questions that I had um
I I do appreciate this approach more um this revision of the plan because I
think it allowing supervisors to be invested earlier in this movement will lead towards a better process and more
inclusive processes you've talked about President Stone making sure there's more access for the community to know that
it's hap that the process is happening that they can give feedback so I think it's I think it's great to have the
supervisors brought in and invested in a significant way earlier in this process
um and you know we'll see if March is possible I I have my questions whether
it's possible but we'll see what they can do because it'll be in their Court you know not ours um and uh let's see
a couple of notes um with the the letter
um I think I I had some sort some edits on the letter
um also um and I I actually also agree that it would be good for us to have the analysis before we send it
um and then whenever we're ready like I I have I can hold my my edits to that
letter for until later um and then just related to this whole conversation we're having around the the
committee or the task force one thing that I wonder just kind of even in the language and the plan was
um and I was looking back at my notes and I thought that I took pretty detailed notes from our last meeting and I just couldn't find the exact thing I
didn't go back and watch the meeting and I had been looking you know when I was reading all this yesterday and uh and
wondered is there um DCA floor is like whether we call it a committee or a task force or a panel or like does it I even
had questions about does it matter if it has a name like that as a um in regards to Brown act
um regulations or anything like that um and my recollection had been make
this it you can have informal conversations but no official committee but I just I couldn't find in my notes
and I just I didn't have time to go back and look so um that's my that's my only recollection but
um but but I do have the actual question about is what is called does that matter at all or is it just that it's not an
actual subcommittee of this body that it has to follow those regulations
um I think I don't think that the name necessarily
dictates um what kind of body it is right you can call it a committee but if it's not
sanctioned by you then they can be a committee if they'd like right but it they have no Authority under you
um the only issue is that we were going
as I remember commissioner die was going to come back with a proposal and then
when she submitted that proposal we were going to evaluate whether we could go
forward with the meetings under the brown act or not and who wanted to participate on the committee on the
commission and all of that hasn't been done um so I I can't give you a straight
answer um without knowing what
Direction the commission wants to take this Committee in so and so if the
committee if um just I know we're just you know pausing on everything that's happened if
we were to bring this back and officially former vote on the committee then it would then be under the brown act as voted no so so I I did I think
commissioner jordanick had this question and I think I followed up with him after the meeting you can advertise the
committee meetings on on your website but the like at no point can three of
you be present um or more of you for that matter as well because then then you will have
violated the brown act right um so so yeah you can definitely like if you guys if the commission wants to
adopt this committee or sanction it or approve it um you can do that but at no point can
three of you attend these meetings um and more than three would create you
know four would create a meeting three would create an actual committee so so
that's why you know if um commissioner levolsi and commissioner
die want to do this that's less than a committee they can go forward and do this you can advertise it on your website
um but at no point can any of you join this point of information
um so and actually I don't even know if this is a point of information president Zone talking here I just I I
something that made me think of this is also just you know who's gonna be drafting the insights of the panel
um and how is that going to be presented to us because or the advisory committee um because you know personally I I don't
want to join these meetings but I do wonder how information is going to be
disseminated to us and to ensure that we are that there's consensus amongst
that group and how will it be um how will the committee
and then I think I put this in my feedback as well like how will it be governed
um and I do believe that there needs to be some transparency to the commission about
that in terms of how they're governed how you're governing it
um and how you know are there going to be minutes taken are is it going to be
recorded in some way who's going to be responsible for the deliverables like I think in theory
there's so much good that could come out of this body but there are a lot of unanswered questions
um I have and I do think that in in the
Spirit of being accessible and transparent with the public if it's all happening out of the public I may have
some concerns about that so um I apologize I think I interrupted actually commissioner Parker now that I
am thinking about it so I'll hand it back to you I didn't have anything okay um commissioner died did you have a
response to that yeah so again this may have been my mission interpretation but
at the after the whole discussion we had at the last meeting I thought the whole idea was to have this be informal
um that's something you know that we didn't want to burden the full commission with another committee and so
that basically commissioner levolsi and I would continue to
you know work with these folks and basically get their recommendations and
you know hopefully providing another nice simple table that is easy to you
know absorb with pros and cons based on our discussion so that will be the
output from from this group to present to you know their recommendations to us
as a group and then you know I would hope that when we're ready to discuss it
that we'd have them on the line to answer any questions so thank you for clarifying
um I would like to make a motion that the in the next meeting in the next
regular meeting in the May elections commission meeting that Commissioners
die and the bullsey provide more specifics around the deliverables and
the information how information will be provided to the elections commission around the what's been happening with
the advisory committee meetings so sure yeah I'll make I don't I don't know if
people yeah I still would like that to be a emotion so let me clean that up a little
bit I move that uh Commissioners die in the volsi in the next regular elections
commission meeting provide the elections commission with more details around
um the actual output and governing process of that advisory committee and
how they will be um Sorry by that in their next plan to us at the a meeting still jumbled but
hopefully still clear second thank you um before we take public comment
commissioner dies there are there other items on this agenda item that you would like us to talk about or potentially
take action on um yeah I wanted to give DCA floors a chance to talk about briefly where they
are on the legal analysis uh basically I had mentioned to
president peskin the possibility that that we as a commission would ask them
to support this bill and I sent him the fact sheet which he promptly sent to his
chief of staff and he said if the commission wants us to support it we will support it so it's
really up to us um on that and uh yeah I'm not a lawyer
either which is why I asked our lawyers to um to provide that analysis and I know that
they were working on it and waiting on approval do you would you like to say anything
on what how when we might expect that
no as I mentioned to you via email we're still waiting for it to be reviewed by our supervisors
and what I when I say supervisors I don't mean the port is supervisors our internal process
president yes so in terms of the so this is PC first this is the legal analysis that's
being talked about of the bill um I mean I don't know what um
commissioner die envisioned um a legal analysis would be but our
memo basically just is a general overview of SB 1248 and we assume for
the purposes of the memo that s if SB 1248 applies to San Francisco then you
know we compare our own Charter section to the sections in 1248 so no
there's no further analysis in that because I'm not sure if this is in the
scope of what you're doing but one of the things I would like to understand is like if this bill were to pass as it's
currently written would um would San Francisco require be required
to pass a charter Amendment or or would if the bill passed does that mean that
the at that point because it's state law the board could just
pass changes via an ordinance or is that something that your your analysis would cover so
um so redistricting is part of the charter um in San Francisco so in order to change the charter you would have to
take it to the voters but if but if a state Bill requires
you know a lot certain a lot of people requires it uh the changes be made by
legislative action so that means that could mean that the board um
puts it on the ballot but does that but what if the voters don't pass it like then you know I'm saying it's like how
does if what if the voters don't support the thing that the state law needs them to
support would you just keep doing more amendments until it passes or yeah I think um we haven't thought that far
because it's not it's just in the thinking stages right now the bill so if the bill comes close to being passed and
actually it passes and gets signed by the governor I'm sure that at that point we'll answer all these questions
okay and just a reminder um you know under ab1248 you have until
March 1st 20 30 30 to make these changes so
I you have seven years so we we can accomplish something in
seven years commissioner Hayden Crowley
church I am not a lawyer but I think that that the way that 1248 may be
written supersedes our local law so we we have to implement it I don't know that it has to go in front of Voters if
we want if we want to do something that would be that would update the current
redistricting then we have to take it to the voters because it has to go to the voters because it's a change to the
Charter but something at the state level would would supersede I think any of
that yeah and that's exactly right perhaps
yeah so the way the law is written vice president no sponsors vice president
yeah that was exactly my question if you have a state law that trumps the charter
then maybe a charter mem is no longer needed to it may not be but but if there's
seven years may you know I I would just think again and not
what that's going on commission commissioner day yeah and and some of you might remember that uh Jen say from
the League of Women Voters had made a comment at the at our last meeting that one way of implementing the change
might be some way to line out everything that's existing in the charter about the redistricting task force which would
then allow state law to take precedence oh I see yeah so it might still require
a charter amendment to delete things in the charter
well I think that'll just be profound to react okay um so
we have a motion on the table it sounds as though we're going to wait for some any other analysis on the
letter we'll hold off for now um let's move to public comment
if you don't mind
okay I'm checking right now I do see a number of people online but
no one has raised their hand
thank you vice president jordanick um okay so let's take a vote on the
motion to have Commissioners die in the bullsey provide in the next elections commission
meeting more insight and a detailed explanation of output that will come
from the advisory committee vice president jordanick yes commissioner
bernholz yes commissioner die aye commissioner Hayden Crowley yes
commissioner level sees absent commissioner Parker yes and I president Stone vote Yes so the motion passes
unanimously with one absent thank you commissioner die we always always
appreciate the efforts and investment to push this forward
okay we're going to close out agenda item number eight agenda item number nine agenda items for future meetings
9. Agenda Items for Future Meetings
discussion and possible action regarding regarding items for future agendas so
um I'll just mention one quick thing um secretary Davis who has already just
hit the ground running has been very good at holding me accountable to trying to set up time for The Retreat
um so please you know look out for that it is coming we are talking about it but
um we recognize people's schedules are you know not wide open so we will be in
touch about dates that is something hopefully we'll talk about in the next meeting the next one of course is the
redistricting and getting some of the updates is there anything else right this moment that folks would like to
elevate can you clarify what your expectations are around the retreat because I have very limited time
um yes I will provide that in the next meeting but um the idea behind the retreat which I
believe I introduced in the last meeting um is to do an off-site where we discuss
some strategic priorities including providing some history on things such as open source in addition to other
strategic priorities but then also perhaps doing a tour of the um
of the of Pier 31 and then also maybe just grabbing a beer
well there are so very we can find you some iced tea some water and water are
you looking at a day a weekend what are you looking at I we don't have that yet but we will we
will we will and you know it's okay if you can't make it the world will keep going
time continues um don't sweat it the idea is to just
get into a different space have some good conversations but also just it'll
build a little camaraderie um I think after a lot that went on last year and the new body being intact I
think it would be a good opportunity for us to come together um and of course members of the public
will be invited to participate as well is there anything else that folks would like to elevate
okay let's take public comments
I see no hands reached excellent um so with that we'll close out gen item
number nine and it's 1001 and I I have
turned to this meeting um of the regular elections Commission